


mother mine

by Siria



Category: Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)
Genre: Coda, Gen, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-27
Updated: 2013-01-27
Packaged: 2017-11-27 04:59:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/658258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gretel hadn't made the decision consciously.</p>
            </blockquote>





	mother mine

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to sheafrotherdon for audiencing.

Gretel hadn't made the decision consciously. Her head had still ached from the fight, the pain from her bruised ribs barely more distracting than the burnt sugar smell of the witch's decaying cottage, and stooping to retrieve the Grand Witch's wand had been more the work of instinct than of thought. If her brother had noticed, she would have said she intended to destroy the thing, lest it fall into the hands of another witch—but Hansel had been distracted, and the wand easy to hide beneath the worn leather of her wrist guard. She'd been as conscious of its presence, on their walk back to Augsburg, as she would have been of someone walking close by her side. The wand was warmer than it should have been, even for wood that had leached away a little of her body's own heat; it felt like touching the skin of someone with a fever. The thought made Gretel shiver. 

When they got back to the town, Gretel told Hansel to go secure the last of their payment from the mayor and to see Benjamin and all the stolen children returned safely to their parents, while she returned to the inn and packed. Even if there hadn't been a troll lurking on Augsburg's outskirts, waiting for them, she would have decided on a quick exit. More than once, clients had turned on them after a job had been successfully completed—no price was too high when a witch was threatening a town, but deflation often set in shockingly quickly once a lighted match had been tossed on the thing's funeral pyre. 

There was a fire burning in the grate in their room at the inn—fitful, but more than enough to have licked hungrily at the wand's dry, old wood. If Gretel had wanted to, she could have destroyed it there and then, and ground the ash beneath the heel of her boot. Instead, she sat and considered it as she quenched her thirst with a mug of small ale. 

They'd wanted her heart for their potion, the witches, claiming her as something like-yet-unlike: a Great White Witch, who was not one of them but who wasn't entirely human, either. Gretel had never entertained a notion of magic as anything other than a force to be fought, to be resisted, as something that the ignorant never feared in quite the right way, but now she had to deal with the fact that it was something that lived inside her, deep down in the marrow of her bones and the rush of her blood. Now she had to think about how having that wand in her hand had felt as natural, as right, as did the heft of a knife or her favourite rifle. 

Gretel couldn't make up her mind about what to do, and that was the worst part. There'd been no room for indecision in her life, not since she'd scrabbled for the key to the handcuffs on the filthy floor of the witch's cottage, not since she'd skewered the bitch on her own knife. It had only ever been assess, decide, and act, but now she settled for wrapping the wand in one of her dirty chemises and storing it at the bottom of her pack. It wasn't a case of out of sight, out of mind—Gretel could still feel its unnatural warmth like a brand against her skin—but at least it was hidden safely away when Hansel returned. 

"Got it," he said, holding up a wad of bank notes in one hand. His jaw and temple were starting to purple, and the gaze he cast over her was a deliberate one, appraising her for the kinds of bruises that neither of them would be willing to talk about for a while yet. "Ready to move out, sis?"

Gretel peered over his shoulder at Benjamin, who was standing outside with a bindle over one shoulder, looking supremely torn between awkwardness and pride. "That the only thing you got?"

Hansel shrugged, haphazardly throwing his belongings into his own pack. "So he's an idiot, but he's an idiot who's a good shot. Figured he can come with us as far as Munich, and if he hasn't earned his keep by then, there's bound to be a coach he can take back here."

"You guys know I can hear you, right?" Benjamin called from the hallway. 

Hansel ignored him; Gretel rolled her eyes. "Fine," she said, "but he's your responsibility," and apparently even that much grudging acceptance was enough to have the boy beaming as if he'd been given a great gift.

Outside on the street, the townspeople watched them warily from the corners of their eyes, no doubt thinking that they were being stealthy in doing so. Faces turned away from them as they passed, a wordless shunning of the different, and it made Gretel want to laugh out loud in a way she so rarely did. She should be used to such reactions—had received similar looks a hundred times from men who felt cowed and angry at the way she and her brother had defended their families; from young girls both intrigued and appalled at how she wore breeches without shame—but this time it felt different because she herself felt different. 

They passed out through the southern gate in the town walls, not pausing to watch it swing shut behind them. The weather had changed and the rain was coming down in a soft mist that dampened Gretel's hair but which couldn't hide the shape of the troll who was unsuccessfully lurking behind a tree at the edge of the woods. Edward raised a hand in greeting as they approached, and Gretel waved back, picking up the pace as they left Augsburg behind them. 

"So it's four of us now?" Hansel muttered.

"Four," Gretel said firmly.

Nothing about her had changed, but even if she never touched that wand again, even if she doused it in whale oil and set it alight, Gretel knew her own full potential, now. She knew what it was to be her mother's daughter.


End file.
